Web site building systems have become very popular and allow novice web site builders to build professional looking and functioning websites. Many of these systems provide both the novice and experienced user ways of building web sites from scratch.
A website building system may be a standalone system, or may be embedded inside a larger editing system. It may also be on-line (i.e. applications are edited and stored on a server), off-line or partially on-line (with web sites being edited locally but uploaded to a central server).
Websites are typically made up of applications and a visually designed application typically consists of pages which may be displayed separately and contain components. Components are typically arranged in a hierarchy of containers (single page and multi-page) inside the page containing atomic components. A multi-page container may display multiple mini-pages. Pages may also include list applications and third party applications.
Pages may also use templates—general page templates or component templates. Specific cases for templates include the use of an application master page containing components replicated in all other regular pages, and the use of an application header and/or footer (which repeat on all pages). The arrangement of components inside a page is called the layout.